types

On Aug 14, 2008, at 12:30 PM, Brendan Eich wrote:
> I took Neil's point to favor not only a separate lint-like tool
> (which some find painful to procure and remember to run), but
> possibly something like Cormac's idea I mentioned a few messages
> ago: a type checker that runs when the code loaded in a web app
> seems complete, and gives warnings to some console -- but which does
> not prevent code from running.
>> Neil, how'd that strike you? It could be built into some developer-
> extension for the browser, so you wouldn't have to remember to run
> jslint.
Logistically I prefer to run the checks before it gets to the browser
(i.e. via Makefile as the first step of build-package-deploy in a
complicated (read: mature) in-house development environment) simply
because it shaves precious time off the edit-build-test-debug cycle.
But that's personal preference, works styles vary. The concept is
spot-on as far as I'm concerned, and I see no reason why the same
underlying tool couldn't be built to suit both environments.
(Thanks for asking.)